Golden Ones
by scarlet asphodels
Summary: Mary's not sure how to embrace the whole lesbian thing. Marlene helps.


**Golden Ones**

 **A/N:** This is an AU departure from my primary WIP, published elsewhere. My goals in writing this are to work through my PTSD and to realistically portray both the good and the bad of a loving but complicated sexual relationship, so it'll be gratuitous in some places, plotty and sad in others, and sometimes all of the above mixed together. First time writing smut, so bear with me. Reviews are appreciated!

xx

And then Marlene's looking at her and her face is all ashen and she says, "I didn't know."

There's a heat enveloping Mary that has nothing to do with the temperature in the dormitory. She can feel the flush in her cheeks spreading. "I know," she says.

"I didn't _know_ , I—damn it, Mary, I thought you were through with this!"

"Oh, through with _what_ , exactly?" Mary retorts. She's standing up from her perch on Marlene's bed now, reaching behind her to smooth out the burgundy sheets. The room is empty apart from the pair of them: Lily's off on a date-not-date with James, Alice in the library studying, and Em—well, it's not like any of them ever know what Emmeline is thinking.

"All of it. The identity crisis, the not _trusting_ me, that—stupid thing where you need me to swoop in and rescue you—"

Mary takes a step toward her now, then another. "I never asked you to rescue me!"

"I have to!" Marlene bellows. "You're my best friend, and you're forever getting yourself mixed up in—it was one thing when it was just low marks and boy problems, but prostitution, come _on_ , Mary—"

Now Marlene's marching straight toward her, too, getting close enough that Mary could count the flyaway hairs by her temples if she wanted to, and Mary says, "We need information. We don't have any other leads on the Death Eaters. I had to do something, I had to make myself useful, no one ever thinks I'm useful—"

" _I_ think you're useful!" says Marlene, and Mary's eyes widen with confusion, then fear. " _I_ need you—that's why it always falls on me to protect you from yourself—I would be nothing without you, Mare, nothing."

For an instant, Mary finds herself wishing that one of the other girls would burst through the door—any of them, back from their date or their books or whatever—just to cut through the strain, to break this lock that Marlene has on her, anything. But nobody does, and Mary's breath hitches in her throat, and she loathes herself as she realizes it's about to spill out of her—"I bloody love you, Marlene; I look at you the way you look at Sirius, and you've never even noticed, and…"

"Oh. Oh," says Marlene, and then, after the longest few seconds of Mary's life, after her chest boils over and the bile bubbles up across her stomach and her cheeks probably darken to beet red, "I'm noticing now."

"I shouldn't have said that. Damn it, I shouldn't have said that."

Marlene backs off for a moment, her legs buckling as she collapses onto the bed behind them. "How long?"

"I dunno. Third year, maybe fourth year…"

"And you've been repressing it all this time." Marlene sighs and pats a spot on the mattress beside her. Mary stares. "Come on, just sit," she begs, and Mary follows suit.

"It's fine. I'm fine. I should go," Mary tells her.

"But… I could help you."

Mary feels her chest starting to inflate again. "You don't have to do that."

"You deserve better than for your first time to be whoring yourself out to some middle-aged pureblood arse," Marlene insists. "You know I love you too—"

"Not the way I love you," says Mary stiffly.

"Oh, hell, what difference does it make? It's all the same thing; it's all showing people what they mean, and Mary, you mean…"

Marlene's voice falters, and she bows her head and pulls her arms around herself. In a daze, Mary shakily raises a hand, then presses her thumb and forefinger around Marlene's chin and tilts it upward.

She isn't sure who leans in first, but suddenly Marlene's lips are all over hers and Mary can feel herself exhaling everything she's been bearing alone for the past year from her mouth into Marlene's, feels one tension subsiding to another that is emanating heat and burn and hideous sweetness—she should be ashamed, and she bites Marlene's lower lip and gasps into her mouth as Marlene tangles a fist in Mary's hair and pulls hard. "Christ," she breathes, and then Marlene's tongue is waltzing with hers and her sweaty hands grasp Mary's.

Mary pulls back a little, slows the frenzied kisses until they're long as hell and tantalizing and afraid. "Trust me," Marlene sighs into Mary's lips, and she guides one of Mary's hands to rest between Mary's own legs.

Jerking her head away, Mary glances down to watch and can see her thighs trembling hard. "I don't know how," she tells Marlene in a croak.

"You mean… you've never gotten yourself off before?" Marlene murmurs.

Mary shakes her head. "Raised Catholic," she offers, smiling.

"Let me teach you," Marlene says, and she ever-so-slowly pushes up the fabric of Mary's robe and unfurls her underwear and pantyhose down to her knees. Resting her palm on the back of Mary's hand and lacing their fingers together, Marlene puts pressure on Mary's middle finger, parts the folds, and slides downward until they reach a swollen lump that makes Mary gasp for air and tremble violently.

"That's where the magic comes from," says Marlene softly. "Little circles should do it."

Locking eyes with Marlene, Mary starts to rotate her finger slowly and inexpertly. It's clumsy and shameful and everything she shouldn't want, but the lump swells up further, and she relishes in the throbbing that starts to spread from _that spot_ down her legs and up through her belly. " _That's_ it, hon. You're doing so well," says Marlene, and the throbbing intensifies.

Mary topples backward until her back is sprawled across the mattress. Deftly, Marlene unties her own robes, unhooks the back of her bra, and shakes the garments off and onto the plush carpet. Taken aback, Mary averts her eyes.

"It's okay to look," says Marlene, gently beginning to unbutton the front of Mary's robes. "Or do more than look."

Mary looks. Marlene's breasts blossom from her chest to culminate in taut pink-brown nubs, and Mary rests her free hand on Marlene's back to draw her down and forward, until Mary's lips can reach.

" _Oh_ god," says Marlene, and she flings her hands onto the mattress to steel herself as Mary flicks her nipple lightly, then harder, with her tongue and wraps her lips around it.

She reaches up to press her free palm against Marlene's cheek and stroke it slowly with her thumb. "Here, I can help you," says Marlene for the second time today. Lifting her hands from the mattress, and in so doing falling onto her side, Marlene closes her hand over Mary's at her pelvis and pries it away. The cold air stings and Mary moans, but Marlene quickly places her own hand where Mary left off and, torturously slowly, drags her forefinger from Mary's clit backward to her vagina and back again.

"Fuck. Fuck, _how_ do you—?"

"Relax, Mary. I've got you," says Marlene.

Mary's thighs are vibrating uncontrollably now, and so does her arm as she tries to lift it and reach up to Marlene. "No, sweetheart, let me take care of you," says Marlene, and Mary moans a little and lies back, her arm splaying uselessly above her head.

With her other hand, Marlene traces feather-light patterns across Mary's body, taking a moment every now and then to press kisses to her forehead. Mary can feel a pressure building behind her cheeks and forehead, and sparks burst in front of her eyes, and everything speeds up and the trembling sears across the rest of her body and is _hot_ and wonderful and terrible and "oh Lord, stop, Marlene, _stop_ , I can't do it, I can't—holy fucking shit, I can't, it's too much, I can't, _no_ —"

She isn't sure how soon Marlene stopped or when exactly she herself started to cry, but she did, weeping and clutching at Marlene's shoulders and burying her face in the crook of the other girl's neck. "I'm sorry," Marlene says. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it was going to happen like that."

"Neither did I," says Mary, and she laughs through the bloody crying and snot and _she ruined it_ , and when Marlene makes to withdraw her hand entirely from her, Mary cries out and pleads, "Please don't leave yet, just stay there for a while—I don't—I…"

"Okay," says Marlene hurriedly, "okay," and she cups her hand over Mary and kisses her temples and sighs.


End file.
